What’s Hoppin’ at Hopkins Homeschool – Coping with the Cold

This last week was a fun one in our homeschool, sort of. We had some ups, some downs and some just don’t care moments. But isn’t that what homeschool is all about? Moments that we are super mom and get it all done, and moments when we just don’t know what we are doing!

This week, we had some nice warm weather. Which, in Minnesota, in January is hit or miss. But this was warm, like above freezing warm. Like we could go outside and not die weather! So, what did I do? I took the kids out and did as many nature studies as I could in the three days we had before the cold came back! I threw the lesson plan out the window and went for it!

We have been working on The Winter Morning Time Plans from Pam Barnhill. Here is my fail of the week…I don’t do them in the morning. I do them at lunch time or even bedtime. We are never all together for breakfast. We do not have a set wake up or school start time. We do have a you need to be out of bed by a certain time, but other than that, I pay attention to when the kids are ready to learn and go for it.

Part of the Winter Morning Time Plans includes the Coping with the Cold NaturExplorer from Cindy West. This is a fun way to let the kids love nature a little more. You don’t always have to get outside, but you can find some great books or activities to help with that. I wish I would have started this in the fall versus in the middle of the winter. This is a great study that helps us focus on the animals in the winter, how they prepare, and how they survive.

This week, we had the chance to check out the tracks in the snow. We love trying to guess what animal it is. And even though we live in town, we still have enough tracks in our yard to try to figure them out. Not only that, but we were able to track our shadows through the day. This was so much fun, until I realized two of the three kids had picked a spot that would be in the shade of the neighbor’s house…another mommy fail moment. However, they were still thrilled to see their shadow was moving during the day and Little Miss had an awesome guide of the sun moving through the day!

While we didn’t do a lot out of the book the beginning of this week, we read some great books at bedtime and spent a lot of time outside checking things out. While many may say this is a fail to the lesson plan, to me, this was a win to my children!

Did you have a fun experience this week? What was your win? What was your fail? I would love to hear about them!